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My Kobo Aura showed up to Japan yesterday so far I'm impressed. I want to make that clear-because I'm going to mention the things I'm not happy about or not clear on so it might look like I have an overall negative impression but that's not at all the case.
The reader is not at all as big or heavy as I was expecting. It feels similar to my PRS-650. The creased back is much more subtle than it looks like in the pictures and doesn't give me the grip that I thought it was. Especially since the plastic is a little slippery. After reading on it last night I was getting used to it though.
Light and speed are both great. I've had no problems with "creaking" that some people have had. The build is great.
The front page does have a bit of a "crowded" look. Most of my "problems" so far have nothing to do with the reader and all to do with my coming from a Sony Reader and not being used to how things are done and some issues with software and the fact that I live in Japan.
So here goes....
I initially had trouble with the set up because I'm living in Japan and the Kobo asked me for my Rakuten id. All of the other Kobo apps/website allow you to sign in with your normal Kobo account but not the reader. I didn't have a Rakuten id and I didn't know how to link my account so that was a problem. So I tried to set up through the computer. The reader was syncing to my Kobo software which was fine until I got to some old newspaper trials which I had a couple of years ago and cancelled. But even though they were canceled for some reason they're still in my system and when it got to those it just hanged. I suspect it's because I'm living in Japan and those subscriptions are not available in Japan. The subscriptions tab doesn't even show up on my Kobo PC software. I've emailed Kobo support to see if they can remove them. So I was never able to complete a full sync. I thought I was in trouble but I tried logging in with my normal id through wifi again and this time it worked! Perhaps connecting to the PC did help. I had about 60 books synced toy reader but the website tells me I have 72 which is odd. One problem I had was that most of the book covers were tiny! And they were all epubs-why would that be so if I synced directly from Kobo? The funny thing is that my side loaded books from calibre were all kepubs thanks to the new kepub plug in. So I archived all the books and sideloaded all my books through Calibre. So much for syncing with Kobo.
Some people have complained about the library a bit. I wish I could view my books according to date added but that doesn't seem to be an option. On my 650 when you order according to title, there is an alphabet sidebar that allows you to jump to the first letter of the title but in the Aura you seem to have to just keep swiping until you get to the book that you're looking for.
Anything else? I wish the light could be adjusted with one touch rather than two. I read in a pitch black room and 5% is fine. I don't know how people did it with the super bright Glo.
My one complaint with hardware is that black is bad for fingerprints as I suspected.
Oh one disappointment is that I expected pictures and maps to look a lot better with the extra resolution and maybe they do but I can't tell because they're so small. Maps and things like that seem just as useless as they were on my old 650. Is there any way to zoom up on pictures in a kepub? (not PDF).
Well that's about it so far. I hope I didn't give the impression that I'm unhappy because that's not the case. Most of these things are just niggles and I hope they'll be improved.
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